Christians & The Tea Party

What does Christianity and the Tea Party have in common? According to the Public Religion Research Institute they share a number of things in common. A new study indicates that the Tea Party movement and conservative Christianity share connections with religion.

A most half (47%) say they are part of the religious right or conservative Christian movement. Of the respondents, 8-in-10 (81%) identify themselves as Christian within the Tea Party movement, 57% also consider themselves part of the Christian conservative movement.

This confirms what many social commentators believe to be a connection to conservative Christianity and the Tea Party. Though there might not be a national coordinated effort to embrace the Tea Party movement with Christianity, the power of grass roots activism is present.

The Tea Party makes up just 11% of the adult population—half the size of the conservative Christian movement (22%).

The Tea Party are mostly social conservatives, not libertarians on social issues. Nearly two-thirds (63%) say abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, and less than 1-in-5 (18%) support allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.

They are largely Republican partisans. More than three-quarters say they identify with (48%) or lean towards (28%) the Republican Party. More than 8-in-10 (83%) say they are voting for or leaning towards Republican candidates in their districts, and nearly three-quarters (74%) of this group report usually supporting Republican candidates.

Thomas Friedman wrote an interesting piece for the New York Times about the Tea Party movement recently. He said:

The Tea Party that has gotten all the attention, the amorphous, self-generated protest against the growth in government and the deficit, is what I’d actually call the “Tea Kettle movement” — because all it’s doing is letting off steam… That is not to say that the energy behind it is not authentic (it clearly is) or that it won’t be electorally impactful (it clearly might be). But affecting elections and affecting America’s future are two different things.

Susan Brooks Thislethwaite of The Washington Post, reported on some connects to the Tea Party and Christianity. A few months ago, she met a Christian couple who were “scared” and believe that we have too many government programs, but accepted Medicaid. In a more recent article, believes that the religious right and the Tea Party share the same membership:

The Tea Party winners are the new darlings of conservative political strategists. The “Christian values” group wants to regain their role in political power brokering, as was clear from the jockeying for position at the recent “Values Summit.” It’s tempting to try to put together folks who have very different motives for their conservatism, but, as often happens with temptation, the reality doesn’t work out so well. In fact, this looks like an increasingly unstable and unworkable coalition.

One interesting difference between evangelical Protestants associated with the traditional religious right and conservatives associated with the Tea Party movement is that the Tea Partiers are somewhat less likely to attend church than white evangelicals and they are less likely to see the Bible as the literal word of God — though they score higher on both measures than the overall U.S. population. But though less devout, Tea Party supporters are more likely to say that “America has always been and is currently a Christian nation” — a view held by 55 percent of Tea Partiers vs. 42 percent of the general population and 43 percent of white evangelicals. This embrace of civil religion points to a strong nationalist element that is often evident at Tea Party rallies.

No matter what you think of the movement or its politics we need to be aware of the religious energy that pushes political or social causes. Just 30,000 people were able to elect conservative Christian Christine O’Donnell to the Republican candidate for the senate seat in Delaware. That is a powerful statement.

We may not always see eye to eye on issues, but we need to understand where our fellow Americans are coming from politically and religiously.